(2007-11-20) — Top United Nations’ scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they wildly overstated the size and the spread of the AIDS epidemic, but that all the millions of people who don’t actually have AIDS will soon drown in the rising tide caused by man-made global climate change.

Faulty methodology caused the scientists to miss the fact that AIDS has been in decline during the same decade when U.N. reports about its rapid, unchecked spread boosted AIDS funding 30-fold, to about $10 billion per year.

“No matter how you look at it, the news is tragic, and more funding is needed,” said Peter Piot, the Belgian scientist whose U.N. AIDS agency reports have driven fund raising. Mr. Piot has previously reported that …

* “the pandemic and its toll are outstripping the worst predictions”
* the epidemic threatens to burst beyond its epicenter in southern Africa to generate widespread illness and death in other countries
* in China alone, there would be 10 million infections — up from 1 million in 2002 — by the end of the decade.

Now, Mr. Piot said, the fate of countless millions has gone from bad to worse.

“A man who might have died quietly in his bed of AIDS,” said Mr. Piot, “now faces the terrifying specter of watching his neighbors slip from their rooftops one-by-one, screaming until the rising deep muffles their voices, knowing that he faces the inevitable moment when his fingers slip from the chimney, the brine subdues his own shrieks and the sea becomes his tomb.”

Mr. Piot denied accusations that he makes alarmist statements to serve a political and fundraising agenda rather than following rigorous scientific processes.

“My alarmist statements have resulted in billions of dollars in funding for research,” Mr. Piot said. “I’m making sure scientists get paid. What could be more scientific than that?”

.
12 Sep 07 – The Southern Hemisphere (Antarctica) has quietly set a new record for most ice extent since 1979. The Southern Hemispheric areal coverage is the highest in the satellite record, just beating out 1995, 2001, 2005 and 2006. Since 1979, the trend has been up for the total Antarctic ice extent.
While the Antarctic Peninsula area has warmed in recent years and ice near it diminished during the Southern Hemisphere summer, the interior of Antarctica has been colder and ice elsewhere has been more extensive and longer lasting, which explains the increase in total extent. This dichotomy was shown in a World Climate Report blog posted recently with a similar tale told by Ohio State Researcher David Bromwich, who agreed: “It’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now.”

Indeed, according the NASA GISS data, the South Pole winter (June/July/August) has cooled about 1 degree F since 1957 and the coldest year was 2004. This winter has been an especially harsh one in the Southern Hemisphere with cold and snow records set in Australia, South America and Africa. We will have recap on this hard winter shortly.

This is what I’ve been saying for years – that the Antarctic
Ice Sheet is growing thicker. The Antarctic Ice Sheet covers
some five million square miles, twice as big as the contiguous
United States. It’s almost 100 times bigger than all of the
rest of the world’s glaciers put together.

In other words, more than 90 percent of the world’s glaciers
are growing. But all we hear about is the ones that are melting.